Profile of the Day: Loretta Young

Loretta Young

On this day in 1913, actress Loretta Young was born in Salt Lake City, Utah.

She was born Gretchen Young to John Earle Young and Gladys Royal. When she was two, her parents divorced and she and her two sisters moved to Hollywood with their mother. By the age of three, Young began working as a child extra in silent films. After signing her first film contract, she was given the name Loretta.

Over the course of her long career, Young successfully transitioned from child star to a critically acclaimed actress in both film and television. In 1948, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in the film The Farmer’s Daughter. A year later, she received a second nomination for her role in Come to the Stable. She successfully transitioned to the relatively new medium of television with her own anthology series, The Loretta Young Show. The series ran from 1953 to 1961 and earned three Emmy Awards.

In 1994, it was revealed that her adopted daughter, Judith, was actually her biological daughter with Clark Gable. She had become pregnant with Gable’s child during the filming of The Call of the Wild. Gable had been married at the time. The pregnancy was covered up, and after her daughter’s birth, Young claimed to have adopted the child.

She died of ovarian cancer on August 12, 2000 at the age of 87.
 

View Loretta Young’s Geni Profile

Image: Wikimedia Commons